The founder of The Pirate Bay has written a letter to the Swedish government urging it not to deport him to Denmark.
Gottfrid Svartholm Warg is due to face trial in Denmark alongside another unnamed suspect.
The pair are expected to be charged with hacking into a social security database, accessing the email accounts of …

COMMENTS

Human rights

I really struggle with the concept of anyone facing extradition to a Scandinavian country complaining of their human rights (.

Sweden should give him a choice.

A choice between being prosecuted and if found guilty face jail time in either Denmark or his adopted home of Cambodia. I reckon he will be singing “Der er et yndigt land” all the way to the court, Either that or he will be looking up the location of the nearest South American Embassy…

Re: Human rights

Graham,

Everyone who is arrested shall be informed promptly, presumably means after his arrest. Has he even been arrested yet, given he's currently in prison for a different offence - and therefore not going anywhere?

It also seems pretty unlikely. If this is a European Arrest Warrant, then their must be a Swedish version for the Swedish to be able to enforce it. Although there could be some arcane matters of legal procedure as to when the actual arrest takes place, I'm not a lawyer.

The second article you quote forbids re-trial, but not necessarily re-arrest pending investigation.

Remember this is the European Arrest Warrant. It's not extradition, where there needs to be a prima facie case made. This is the same argument that Julian Assange just lost. He's not even been charged, because under Swedish law you must have a pre-charge interview. Which he left the country before.

Now the Swedish Supreme Court may take a different attitude to ours, which was that the law was acceptable. It would certainly be funny if they were willing to accept Assange, but unwilling to give up Warg under the same law.

But it's supposed to be arrest, not extradition. It's why I think the EAW was a rubbish idea, although it's still only the second worst extradition treaty that the last Labour government signed! the dozy bunch of idiots...

it was the one-armed guy

" It was found that my computer could have been controlled remotely, and that it had acted as a ‘computer lab’/ server, accessible to a wider audience. I could therefore not be held responsible for what was found on it."

Re: it was the one-armed guy

Re: it was the one-armed guy

quote: "Time to go enable remote desktop with a blank password then, as apparently this will get me off all charges I could possibly face..."

If you are told as much in a court of law, after they have assessed the evidence, then yes.

Whether you agree with it or not, that is apparently what the Swedish courts decided in his case. They apparently felt (rightly or wrongly) that there was not enough evidence to point directly at Warg being culpable for the Nordea hack (that pesky "innocent until proven guilty" thing). They still put him away for a year for the Logica thing though.

If Denmark are actually intending to try him for the Nordea hack, it does sound like they want to overturn the Swedish courts decision. Personally, I do not like the sound of prosecution tourism, and fully agree that that would be the type of thing that the ECHR Protocol 7, Article 4 should be intended to stop.

However he is shit outta luck on that score, since Sweden and Denmark are different States, and Protocol 7 only mentions double jeopardy inside the same State:

"Article 4 – Right not to be tried or punished twice

1. No one shall be liable to be tried or punished again in criminal proceedings under the jurisdiction of the same State for an offence for which he has already been finally acquitted or convicted in accordance with the law and penal procedure of that State.

2. The provisions of the preceding paragraph shall not prevent the reopening of the case in accordance with the law and penal procedure of the State concerned, if there is evidence of new or newly discovered facts, or if there has been a fundamental defect in the previous proceedings, which could affect the outcome of the case.

3. No derogation from this Article shall be made under Article 15 of the Convention."

Linguistic (in)abilities

Back in undergrad days, a friend of Swedish ancestry took a course titled Reading Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian*, the idea being that the written (not spoken) languages were close enough as to make it possible (in one semester). Seems he's grasping at straws to claim he doesn't understand the warrant.

All mouth until it's time to take his punishment

The Pirate Bay boys have been all mouth until they have to finally take their punishment for massive copyright infringment and now all of a sudden they want mercy and forgiveness of their crimes. Fat chance of that happening. 25 years in the slammer is the medicine this clod deserves.